Using video and audio recordings of animal behavior, students in a variety of courses can pose questions and gather data from diverse species and locations to test their hypotheses. Such recordings are freely available online in the Macaulay Library, the world’s largest scientifically curated archive of natural history media. Managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Macaulay Library currently houses about 50,000 video clips and 123,300 audio recordings (including the sounds of 75 percent of the world’s bird species, and recordings dating back to 1929). This article, aimed at faculty teaching biology and environmental science courses, summarizes how to search the online archive and visualize streaming sound files with Raven Viewer. It also describes how instructors have used these tools in introductory and upper-level laboratory and lecture classes as part of the NSF-funded Online Research in Biology project.

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/content/journal/jmbe/10.1128/jmbe.v13i1.382

2012-05-03

2018-08-14

Abstract:

Using video and audio recordings of animal behavior, students in a variety of courses can pose questions and gather data from diverse species and locations to test their hypotheses. Such recordings are freely available online in the Macaulay Library, the world’s largest scientifically curated archive of natural history media. Managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Macaulay Library currently houses about 50,000 video clips and 123,300 audio recordings (including the sounds of 75 percent of the world’s bird species, and recordings dating back to 1929). This article, aimed at faculty teaching biology and environmental science courses, summarizes how to search the online archive and visualize streaming sound files with Raven Viewer. It also describes how instructors have used these tools in introductory and upper-level laboratory and lecture classes as part of the NSF-funded Online Research in Biology project.

The front page of the Macaulay Library after pressing the “+” button for advanced search options. As well as facilitating searches by location, age, sex, or behavior, advanced search allows the user to find three specific types of recordings: 1) Environmental (ambient soundscapes or scenic vistas); 2) Effects (e.g., feet crunching snow, thunder); and 3) People (including a large number of archived scientist interviews from the joint NPR and National Geographic program Radio Expeditions).

jmbe/13/1/jmbe-13-1-086f1_thmb.gif

jmbe/13/1/jmbe-13-1-086f1.gif

Click to view

FIGURE 1

The front page of the Macaulay Library after pressing the “+” button for advanced search options. As well as facilitating searches by location, age, sex, or behavior, advanced search allows the user to find three specific types of recordings: 1) Environmental (ambient soundscapes or scenic vistas); 2) Effects (e.g., feet crunching snow, thunder); and 3) People (including a large number of archived scientist interviews from the joint NPR and National Geographic program Radio Expeditions).

Ithaca College students use the Macaulay Library to design their own investigations on variation in animal sounds as part of an Animal Behavior lab section. The “at-a-glance” guide to Raven Viewer pictured can be found on the Online Research in Biology website (http://birds.cornell.edu/orb). Instructors may wish to ask the students to bring headphones or earbuds, and may want to provide alcohol wipes or splitters for sharing headphones.

jmbe/13/1/jmbe-13-1-086f2_thmb.gif

jmbe/13/1/jmbe-13-1-086f2.gif

Click to view

FIGURE 2

Ithaca College students use the Macaulay Library to design their own investigations on variation in animal sounds as part of an Animal Behavior lab section. The “at-a-glance” guide to Raven Viewer pictured can be found on the Online Research in Biology website (http://birds.cornell.edu/orb). Instructors may wish to ask the students to bring headphones or earbuds, and may want to provide alcohol wipes or splitters for sharing headphones.